How to write an Annotated Bibliography

Annotated references are references to books, articles, and documents. Each source Is followed by a brief descriptive and evaluative paragraph, the annotation. The purpose of the annotation is to Inform the reader of the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the sources cited. (Comell.edu, 2017).

An annotated bibliography includes a summary and/or evaluation of each of the sources. Your annotations may do one or more of the following.

Summarise: Some annotations summarise the source. What are the main arguments? What is the point of this book or article? What topics are covered? If asked what this article/book is about, what would you say?

Assess: After summarising a source, it may be helpful to evaluate it. Is it a useful source? How does it compare with other sources in your bibliography? Is the information reliable? Is this source biased or objective? What is the goal of this source?

Reflect: Once you’ve summarised and assessed a source, you need to ask how it fits into your research. Was this source helpful to you? How does it help you shape your argument? How can you use this source in your research project? Has it changed, how you think about your topic?

Here’s an example/sample.

Sample Reference:

Gaad, E., Arif, M. and Scott, F., 2006. Systems analysis of the UAE education system. International Journal of Educational Management, 20(4), pp 291-303.

Sample Annotation (for the above reference):

Summary

This purpose of this paper is to examine the organization of the UAE educational system, its components, their goals, and finally their effectiveness.

Assess

This is an independent analysis so provides objective and reliable information. However, the source is from 2006, so the specific data may be out of date.

Reflect

This is a useful source as it gives insights into the structure of the industry for the Porter’s 5 forces analysis. but the validity and reliability could be compromised by being no longer fully relevant.

For most reports, you do not have to annotate all the references; only a handful (5-6) annotations may be sufficient (it should be mentioned in the guidelines). So choose a selection of different quality references to annotate. The remainder of your references will not need to be annotated.

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